Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[TheMercenary]

Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees’ spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law’s implementation.

“The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage,” said Richard Burkhauser in a telephone interview Monday. Burkhauser is an economist who teaches in Cornell University’s department of policy analysis and management. On Monday the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper on the subject that Burkhauser co-authored with colleagues from Cornell and Indiana University.

Employees and employers can use the rules to their own advantage, he said. “A very large number of workers” will be able to apply for federal subsidies, “dramatically increasing the cost” of the law, he said.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/08/re...#ixzz1UZeO5xD0


The Importance of the Meaning and Measurement of “Affordable” in the Affordable Care Act
Richard V. Burkhauser, Sean Lyons, Kosali I. Simon

This working paper highlights the practical importance of two critical but under-explored assumptions behind existing estimates of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s potential impact on the mix of employees and families who may have employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) in the future or may receive subsidies in the new health insurance exchanges. The first assumption is whether ACA’s affordable coverage rule will be interpreted to mean that employers must provide affordable single coverage or that they must provide affordable family coverage policies to workers with families to avoid paying a fine. The second assumption is how much employers and employees will cooperatively agree in the future to designing new compensation contracts to take advantage of the way “affordability” is determined. We show that depending on these assumptions, the ACA could lead to far more lower to moderate income families gaining access to affordable coverage through exchanges or, conversely, to far fewer of these families being covered by ESI, even if no employers drop their health insurance plans as a result of the new law. Using our stylized models, we find at one extreme that the share of private sector workers covered by ESI would fall by as much as 12.7 percentage points, relative to a case of full compliance with the law, if the ACA affordability coverage rule is interpreted to apply to family coverage and employees directly pay 100 percent of the cost of the ESI in premiums, with compensating higher wages making them no worse off. At the other extreme, we find no changes in the share of private sector workers covered by ESI along this margin if employee contribution shares do not change in the future and affordability is interpreted to refer to single coverage. What constitutes a realistic point between these two extremes depends on exactly how the affordability coverage rule will be interpreted and the degree that employers and employees will actually be able to make these adjustments because of labor market rigidities. This working paper’s contribution is to point out the importance of these hitherto unexplored factors for future consideration in research that uses more sophisticated micro simulation models. In our stylized model, most of the effect of the movement onto the subsidized exchanges occurs when employees directly pay less than 50 percent of the ESI family premium. We conclude by discussing the limitations of stylized calculations relative to full simulation models, and directions for future research.

[classicman]

“The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage,”

I thought they were an independent agency. How is it they were "told" to do anything?

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by classicman

I thought they were an independent agency. How is it they were "told" to do anything?

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. Of course, the rag Merc did his cut and paste from seemed biased and has its own agenda. What a surprise!

[classicman]

I never heard of the man, so I goggled him.
Looking through the news feeds that carried his name were all suspect.
So I dug a lil deeper ...

I figured that I'd get a bunch of right wing extremist crap. I was shocked when I read his Biography

Then again there is this

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

I never heard of the man, so I goggled him.
Looking through the news feeds that carried his name were all suspect.
So I dug a lil deeper ...

I figured that I'd get a bunch of right wing extremist crap. I was shocked when I read his Biography

Well given his educational credentials I would say he has something to back up his opinions, like them or not, agree with them or not.... But rather than attack the person maybe you can attack the opinion directly?

[TheMercenary]

It was a 9-11 conspiracy.

[TheMercenary]

How is that unemployment rate since the advent of "millions of Shovel Ready jobs"? Anyone?

[classicman]

I didn't comment on it as I was unsure if it was as Sam said
a rag that seemed biased with its own agenda.

It doesn't appear to be that way, so I have nothing to say about it.
All I did was lend some credibility to the quote - you're welcome, Mr. Pissy.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

I didn't comment on it as I was unsure if it was as Sam said
a rag that seemed biased with its own agenda.

It doesn't appear to be that way, so I have nothing to say about it.
All I did was lend some credibility to the quote - you're welcome, Mr. Pissy.

Not pissy, just commenting on your comment. Stand by it. Don't shy away and pretend to be unbiased about it. No matter to me....

The dude has the credentials to make the comments he makes about the subjects. That was my only point. Better than the majority of opinions around here.

[classicman]

You never made any point about his credibility. I did.

You've got to admit you copy and paste a lot of stuff that turns out to be partisan opinionated crap.
This one is different and I pointed that out. Again, you're welcome.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

You never made any point about his credibility. I did.

You've got to admit you copy and paste a lot of stuff that turns out to be partisan opinionated crap.
This one is different and I pointed that out. Again, you're welcome.

None of that invalidates the points made.... It only attacks the individual and attempts to gain favor with the liberal detractors, it does not address the subject at hand.

[classicman]

By the way, I couldn't find any well known news source that picked this up. not on CNN, BSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, AP ... heck it isn't even on Faux snooze.

[classicman]

OMFG - Who (or is that whom?) did I attack? I gave your post some credibility.

[classicman]

oh, and yet again - you're welcome.

[TheMercenary]

Healthcare law could leave families with high insurance costs

A major provision of the healthcare reform law designed to prevent businesses from dropping coverage for their workers could inadvertently leave families without access to subsidized health insurance.

The problem is a huge headache for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, because it could leave families unable to buy affordable health insurance when the healthcare law requires that everyone be insured starting in 2014.

Some of the administration’s closest allies on healthcare reform warn this situation could dramatically undercut support for the law, which already is unpopular with many voters and contributed to Democrats losing the House in the 2010 midterm elections.

“It’s going to be a massive problem if it comes out that families have to buy really expensive employer-based coverage,” said Jocelyn Guyer, deputy executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

“If they don’t fix this — and by 'they' I mean either the administration or Congress — we’re going to have middle-class families extremely unhappy with [healthcare] reform in 2014, because they’ll basically be facing financial penalties for not buying coverage when they don’t have access to any affordable options.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch...nsurance-costs